Thunderbolt cable could be an issue too.
Waiting for mine from bhphotovideo... Availability is at 1 june after being at 19 August. Will probably be available locally here before it ships from BH.
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Belkin Officially Begins Shipping Thunderbolt Express Dock
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Thunderbolt cable could be an issue too.
Waiting for mine from bhphotovideo... Availability is at 1 june after being at 19 August. Will probably be available locally here before it ships from BH.
when it was down, what do you have on the network pref? does it show connected or red dot?
It showed a red dot.
It worked flawlessly all day monday and tuesday.
I just got home from work and plugged in. So far no response from Belkin.
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Thunderbolt cable could be an issue too.
I've thought about that. If the issues persist, I will try another thunderbolt cable and see.
Ok, after an hour of use plugged in, internet connection went out, video still works, drives still connected. I've restarted the mba and things are working again.
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Got one of these yesterday for work. A few of my observations:
It won't power an external Apple USB Superdrive but it will power the two external hard drives I have hanging off it.
I have a native DisplayPort monitor plugged into the Belkin and the monitor's USB hub is also plugged in, going out to my keyboard/mouse.
Very nice having just one cable now. Except for the complaints about not properly unmounting my drives, unplugging and re-plugging seem to work fine.
The boss, who has a Cinema Display, is doing his best to avoid showing envy.
I didn't test the Ethernet but I'm going to test it today/overnight having read this thread. If it doesn't work then I'll need to return it, I have to be able to recommend *some* dock for new hardware purchases ... ports on Macs are becoming an endangered species.
It won't power an external Apple USB Superdrive but it will power the two external hard drives I have hanging off it.
I have a native DisplayPort monitor plugged into the Belkin and the monitor's USB hub is also plugged in, going out to my keyboard/mouse.
Very nice having just one cable now. Except for the complaints about not properly unmounting my drives, unplugging and re-plugging seem to work fine.
The boss, who has a Cinema Display, is doing his best to avoid showing envy.
I didn't test the Ethernet but I'm going to test it today/overnight having read this thread. If it doesn't work then I'll need to return it, I have to be able to recommend *some* dock for new hardware purchases ... ports on Macs are becoming an endangered species.
As long as storage has sata interface, eSata will be more "native" than anything else.Unlikely, but who cares? A device based on a decent SATA 6Gb/s to USB 3.0 bridge chip that supports UASP trumps eSATA on pretty much every other metric.
Okay, they just changed usb4 to be called usb3.5 (etc.), but it doesn't change the thing that usb will be good enough for 99% of everything (you do know what Displaylink is, right?) and only 0,1% will be willing to pay ever increasing price gap for TB.USB 4.0 is not on any sort of near-term horizon. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group recently announced a specification update to add a 10Gbps SuperSpeed USB capability to the USB 3.0 Specification. According to this document, the 1.0 draft of this update will be available in the Q3 2013 timeframe, which is actually well ahead of what was initially announced. The other good news is that in addition to the nominal bitrate doubling, a more efficient encoding scheme will be used. A lot may happen between now and 2015, but it would be a miracle if Intel releases an updated xHCI spec and a chipset that integrates 10 Gbit/s SuperSpeed USB by then. This makes it highly unlikely that we'll see a Mac with this capability by 2015.
For historical perspective:
USB 1.1 spec released Q3 1998, integrated by Intel Q2 1999
USB 2.0 spec released Q2 2000, integrated by Intel Q2 2002
USB 3.0 spec released Q4 2008, xHCI 1.0 released Q2 2010, integrated by Intel Q2 2012
USB 3.0 update released Q3 2013, integrated by Intel...
Granted, the xHCI was designed to be eXtensible, so this update may take less time to roll out, but all the stars would have to align for Apple to ship a product including it just two years from now. However, in the first half of 2014, Intel will be ramping production of Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt controllers, which will provide a full 20 Gbit/s, full-duplex link and DisplayPort 1.2 with HBR2 and MST capabilities. USB 3.0 crushes Thunderbolt on price/performance for most consumer applications, however, Thunderbolt can do things that USB simply cannot. As long as USB is not a true digital display interface, and DisplayPort is still relevant, Apple will most likely include a DP port, and it might as well also be a Thunderbolt port.
You should know by now, Apple strives to cater to the 1%.
New DP spec includes daisy chaining of displays, so I'd guess that if Apple will keep some other port than usb in their products, it will be DP. They will save a lot of money with that.
I just can't come up with any reason why faster usb arriving sooner would not make TB devices even more useless and therefore even more expensive.
TB will have same fate than infiniband. Technically really nice, but not included in mainstream products that also Apple's products have been trying to be recent years.
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Awesome if this was early 2012.
In 2013, this is too expensive. Pass.
About the same price to dump my 2011 MBA 13 on fleabay and just get a 2012 model to get the requisite USB 3.0 ports for transferring my D800 Raw files which were just too painful at USB 2.0 speeds.
Expensive, what it is, but this is the kind of thing I want. Make me a nice, cheap IPS display, the back of the strap, and then I'm good to go.
Unpowered USB ports
I have read that the USB ports lack power, so good luck plugging in a portable drive. There is another dock coming out for $100 less and powered USB ports. This one is a waste of money.
I have read that the USB ports lack power, so good luck plugging in a portable drive. There is another dock coming out for $100 less and powered USB ports. This one is a waste of money.
I have read that the USB ports lack power, so good luck plugging in a portable drive. There is another dock coming out for $100 less and powered USB ports. This one is a waste of money.
You may have read that, but it isn't factual. I had 3 bus powered drives plugged in simultaneously with no issues whatsoever.
Has anyone tried plugging a USB hub into this? I'd like to have access to a few more USB ports than 3... maybe a total of 5 or 6 at most and wouldnt mind using another hub plugged into the back. I've got a lot of USB peripherals to work with. I'd be okay getting some slower speeds out of the hub if it will still work. Anyone done this?
Has anyone tried plugging a USB hub into this? I'd like to have access to a few more USB ports than 3... maybe a total of 5 or 6 at most and wouldnt mind using another hub plugged into the back. I've got a lot of USB peripherals to work with. I'd be okay getting some slower speeds out of the hub if it will still work. Anyone done this?
I have the dock because my mac mini is a 2011 model that has Thunderbolt but not USB3. So for me, it was a way to get USB3 (and the other extras) without buying a new mac mini. If that's the case for you, you might want to consider a USB2 hub for your USB2 peripherals plugging into a USB2 port on the system.
Otherwise there's no reason that the hub wouldn't work from a technical standpoint, but I have not tried this myself.
I have the dock because my mac mini is a 2011 model that has Thunderbolt but not USB3. So for me, it was a way to get USB3 (and the other extras) without buying a new mac mini. If that's the case for you, you might want to consider a USB2 hub for your USB2 peripherals plugging into a USB2 port on the system.
Otherwise there's no reason that the hub wouldn't work from a technical standpoint, but I have not tried this myself.
Well, my USB ports are broken (they shorted out and Apple says I need to replace the entire Logic Board... outside of warranty). So, the Belkin hub seems to be my best option at the moment to restore USB functionality.
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